Because Fat-Shaming is Sooo Cool

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_145981.html

Being obese is a health risk, there is no way around that.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_145981.html

Being obese is a health risk, there is no way around that.

Motorbiking is a health risk.

Running is a health risk.

Weight lifting is a health risk. (Not that I am accusing you of that) see below.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-czj6HI_NUZE/T4_PTJLFpnI/AAAAAAAADe8/eSzSYSJPyVw/s1600/Protein+Can+Kill.jpg

Excessive bodybuilding is a health risk.

Walking out your front door .... is a health risk.

Don't see anyone shaming them. Pick your poison I say. But I find the notion that people should be decried for being fat because "it's a health risk" is just cowardly. We all risk our health every day doing things we love. For some people that's food. Face it if being fat made you sexy no one would even care. That's what makes fat shaming so shallow and disgusting. Of course, there are limits no excess should be indulged in to the point of obsession. No ones gonna look at someone weighing 400lb's and go yep nothing to see here!

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_145981.html

Being obese is a health risk, there is no way around that.

Motorbiking is a health risk.

Running is a health risk.

Weight lifting is a health risk.

Excessive bodybuilding is a health risk.

Walking out your front door .... is a health risk.

Don't see anyone shaming them. Pick your poison I say. But I find the notion that people should be decried for being fat because "it's a health risk" is just cowardly. We all risk our health every day doing things we love. For some people that's food. Face it if being fat made you sexy no one would even care. That's what makes fat shaming so shallow and disgusting.

I'd love to see the literature on how weight lifting is a health risk? Obesity is a medical issue these things you mention are not. Apples and oranges.

So many things to say I don't know where to start ...

I'm 45 years old. In my adult life, the lightest I have been is about 12 1/2 to 13 stone. The heaviest I've been is nearly 19 stone, which was 18 months ago or so. I'm currently 14 stone. My weight has yo-yo'd a lot, but I'm not the classic yo-yo dieter. When my weight has been low it's been because I've been doing an adequate amount of exercise, in addition to eating well. The whole "don't starve yourself to lose weight" thing was promoted early enough in my life that I've not fallen into the classic yo-yo syndrome, I never starve myself. My weight problem has been about composition of my diet. There was a point where I was drinking beer to the tune of 8000 - 10000 calories a week and eating a lot of junk food. In the periods where I've been a healthier weight I was still eating a lot of food, but it was lean protein, salad, veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains ... which is the composition of my diet now and a major reason why I've lost nearly a third of my body weight in the last 18 months. The other reason is I now do about 4000 calories worth of exercise a week.

I have been through a few cycles of diet + exercise related health boosts. The last time I did this I was just over 40, and my weight went down to just over 13 stone. I have been following pretty much the same regime as then, for longer, and I can't get below 14 stone. The longer you are overweight, the longer it takes to lose it again. I'm sure my weight will reduce further, but I'm not going to target weight loss as a goal, I'm just going to stick to my guns and let it happen. My goals are a healthy diet and fitness. Even with the extra weight I'm as fit as I have ever been, including when I was in my early 20s and I was playing a huge amount of sport.

While I don't agree with the tone of the Daily Fail article, she makes several excellent points. One is we need to stop abusing children by feeding them junk food because it sets them up for problems later in life. You cannot argue with this. She also says that we need to blame big business for promoting sugar and fat laden foods. This also is self evident truth. We live in what has been called a "toxic food environment". If you search on youtube for "the men who made us fat" you will find 3 episodes about how our diet was deliberately altered in the 70s by unscrupulous businessmen, solely for the purpose of making more profit from food. Jaques Peretti, the journalist who made this series has been criticised for some of the content, but the history of how we were manipulated into spending more on food is fascinating. My conclusion is that we ourselves are not solely responsible for rising obesity levels.

However ... we must take personal responsibility for our lives, our health, our behaviour. Unfortunately we live in a society which consistently erodes our ability to do this. We are bombarded with manipulation from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep: Advertising, commercial music, so-called impartial scientific studies sponsored by big business to promote an agenda ... there is an endless commentary on how we should live our lives and it's becoming increasingly difficult to process the information.

But still, we must take personal responsibility for our lives! If you're fat, admit it to yourself. This should not lead to any thoughts that you are a bad person, do not deserve to be happy, are incapable of achieving wonderful things, cannot be successful etc etc. You're just fat. And that means that your health is at risk. Charity begins at home, and you have to love yourself before you can love other people or be loved. Do you love yourself enough to behave in way which will make you live a longer, more enjoyable life?

I started smoking when I was 23. I finally gave up when I was 42. It took me ten years. Ten years from the first time I said to myself, you must be a non smoker. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and I've stood on the top of several Alpine peaks ;-) I remember one day looking myself in the eye in the mirror and saying "You're a drug addict." It was a turning point in my relationship with nicotine. Still took a while after that, but I had started on the road that's led me here.

Perhaps some fat people could do with looking themselves in the eye and saying some harsh but true words. But that's for you alone to decide. I'm not really aware of fat acceptance, the little I know of it I've read on this site in the last few days. The people who say it's about discarding the negative emotions associated with being overweight are the ones talking sense I think. A cycle of self-hatred based on your weight is only going to reduce your ability to lose the weight. But it's not OK to be overweight! For plenty of reasons already mentioned in this thread and more. Be positive about life, be happy, love and be loved, enjoy every second of your day! But lose that weight.

Fitness, weight, diet and exercise are all linked together in a complicated way. Broadly speaking weight is about diet and fitness is about exercise but they feed back to each other. More muscle mass means a higher base metabolic requirement, you will burn more calories just sitting still. A great diet means you won't feel sluggish and will do more exercise. The information is out there for free, just google and start reading.

And lose that weight!

So many things to say I don't know where to start ...

I'm 45 years old. In my adult life, the lightest I have been is about 12 1/2 to 13 stone. The heaviest I've been is nearly 19 stone, which was 18 months ago or so. I'm currently 14 stone. My weight has yo-yo'd a lot, but I'm not the classic yo-yo dieter. When my weight has been low it's been because I've been doing an adequate amount of exercise, in addition to eating well. The whole "don't starve yourself to lose weight" thing was promoted early enough in my life that I've not fallen into the classic yo-yo syndrome, I never starve myself. My weight problem has been about composition of my diet. There was a point where I was drinking beer to the tune of 8000 - 10000 calories a week and eating a lot of junk food. In the periods where I've been a healthier weight I was still eating a lot of food, but it was lean protein, salad, veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains ... which is the composition of my diet now and a major reason why I've lost nearly a third of my body weight in the last 18 months. The other reason is I now do about 4000 calories worth of exercise a week.

I have been through a few cycles of diet + exercise related health boosts. The last time I did this I was just over 40, and my weight went down to just over 13 stone. I have been following pretty much the same regime as then, for longer, and I can't get below 14 stone. The longer you are overweight, the longer it takes to lose it again. I'm sure my weight will reduce further, but I'm not going to target weight loss as a goal, I'm just going to stick to my guns and let it happen. My goals are a healthy diet and fitness. Even with the extra weight I'm as fit as I have ever been, including when I was in my early 20s and I was playing a huge amount of sport.

While I don't agree with the tone of the Daily Fail article, she makes several excellent points. One is we need to stop abusing children by feeding them junk food because it sets them up for problems later in life. You cannot argue with this. She also says that we need to blame big business for promoting sugar and fat laden foods. This also is self evident truth. We live in what has been called a "toxic food environment". If you search on youtube for "the men who made us fat" you will find 3 episodes about how our diet was deliberately altered in the 70s by unscrupulous businessmen, solely for the purpose of making more profit from food. Jaques Peretti, the journalist who made this series has been criticised for some of the content, but the history of how we were manipulated into spending more on food is fascinating. My conclusion is that we ourselves are not solely responsible for rising obesity levels.

However ... we must take personal responsibility for our lives, our health, our behaviour. Unfortunately we live in a society which consistently erodes our ability to do this. We are bombarded with manipulation from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep: Advertising, commercial music, so-called impartial scientific studies sponsored by big business to promote an agenda ... there is an endless commentary on how we should live our lives and it's becoming increasingly difficult to process the information.

But still, we must take personal responsibility for our lives! If you're fat, admit it to yourself. This should not lead to any thoughts that you are a bad person, do not deserve to be happy, are incapable of achieving wonderful things, cannot be successful etc etc. You're just fat. And that means that your health is at risk. Charity begins at home, and you have to love yourself before you can love other people or be loved. Do you love yourself enough to behave in way which will make you live a longer, more enjoyable life?

I started smoking when I was 23. I finally gave up when I was 42. It took me ten years. Ten years from the first time I said to myself, you must be a non smoker. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and I've stood on the top of several Alpine peaks ;-) I remember one day looking myself in the eye in the mirror and saying "You're a drug addict." It was a turning point in my relationship with nicotine. Still took a while after that, but I had started on the road that's led me here.

Perhaps some fat people could do with looking themselves in the eye and saying some harsh but true words. But that's for you alone to decide. I'm not really aware of fat acceptance, the little I know of it I've read on this site in the last few days. The people who say it's about discarding the negative emotions associated with being overweight are the ones talking sense I think. A cycle of self-hatred based on your weight is only going to reduce your ability to lose the weight. But it's not OK to be overweight! For plenty of reasons already mentioned in this thread and more. Be positive about life, be happy, love and be loved, enjoy every second of your day! But lose that weight.

Fitness, weight, diet and exercise are all linked together in a complicated way. Broadly speaking weight is about diet and fitness is about exercise but they feed back to each other. More muscle mass means a higher base metabolic requirement, you will burn more calories just sitting still. A great diet means you won't feel sluggish and will do more exercise. The information is out there for free, just google and start reading.

And lose that weight!

Awesome post!

See my edit i decided to explain a bit better. It makes sense because dead is dead is dead. If we take the view that our own personal health and safety is paramount to everything we end up living cowardly, shallow lives no matter how healthy we are. Some people just love food too much to care about some detriment to their health. Like I said there are limits but there's no need to ostracize people for having some extra weight. And i'm sorry if you have been healthy all your life then you really really don't understand a damn thing about how bad it is. People look at you like a second class person. No not even that. Like an animal. It is discrimination of the worst possible kind. And nothing excuses it. Not the health consequences of being fat. Not the benefits of being thin. Not beauty not nothing. It turned me inward and disgusted me with humanity for 15 damn years. I might never have regained my faith.

Fat shaming is wrong and if a person does it they are a bigot. End of discussion.

Because truth be told all fat shaming does is drive people further away from health further away from caring what they look like to others.

It's not naughty or a matter of opinion. It's vile.

So many things to say I don't know where to start ...

I'm 45 years old. In my adult life, the lightest I have been is about 12 1/2 to 13 stone. The heaviest I've been is nearly 19 stone, which was 18 months ago or so. I'm currently 14 stone. My weight has yo-yo'd a lot, but I'm not the classic yo-yo dieter. When my weight has been low it's been because I've been doing an adequate amount of exercise, in addition to eating well. The whole "don't starve yourself to lose weight" thing was promoted early enough in my life that I've not fallen into the classic yo-yo syndrome, I never starve myself. My weight problem has been about composition of my diet. There was a point where I was drinking beer to the tune of 8000 - 10000 calories a week and eating a lot of junk food. In the periods where I've been a healthier weight I was still eating a lot of food, but it was lean protein, salad, veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains ... which is the composition of my diet now and a major reason why I've lost nearly a third of my body weight in the last 18 months. The other reason is I now do about 4000 calories worth of exercise a week.

I have been through a few cycles of diet + exercise related health boosts. The last time I did this I was just over 40, and my weight went down to just over 13 stone. I have been following pretty much the same regime as then, for longer, and I can't get below 14 stone. The longer you are overweight, the longer it takes to lose it again. I'm sure my weight will reduce further, but I'm not going to target weight loss as a goal, I'm just going to stick to my guns and let it happen. My goals are a healthy diet and fitness. Even with the extra weight I'm as fit as I have ever been, including when I was in my early 20s and I was playing a huge amount of sport.

While I don't agree with the tone of the Daily Fail article, she makes several excellent points. One is we need to stop abusing children by feeding them junk food because it sets them up for problems later in life. You cannot argue with this. She also says that we need to blame big business for promoting sugar and fat laden foods. This also is self evident truth. We live in what has been called a "toxic food environment". If you search on youtube for "the men who made us fat" you will find 3 episodes about how our diet was deliberately altered in the 70s by unscrupulous businessmen, solely for the purpose of making more profit from food. Jaques Peretti, the journalist who made this series has been criticised for some of the content, but the history of how we were manipulated into spending more on food is fascinating. My conclusion is that we ourselves are not solely responsible for rising obesity levels.

However ... we must take personal responsibility for our lives, our health, our behaviour. Unfortunately we live in a society which consistently erodes our ability to do this. We are bombarded with manipulation from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep: Advertising, commercial music, so-called impartial scientific studies sponsored by big business to promote an agenda ... there is an endless commentary on how we should live our lives and it's becoming increasingly difficult to process the information.

But still, we must take personal responsibility for our lives! If you're fat, admit it to yourself. This should not lead to any thoughts that you are a bad person, do not deserve to be happy, are incapable of achieving wonderful things, cannot be successful etc etc. You're just fat. And that means that your health is at risk. Charity begins at home, and you have to love yourself before you can love other people or be loved. Do you love yourself enough to behave in way which will make you live a longer, more enjoyable life?

I started smoking when I was 23. I finally gave up when I was 42. It took me ten years. Ten years from the first time I said to myself, you must be a non smoker. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and I've stood on the top of several Alpine peaks ;-) I remember one day looking myself in the eye in the mirror and saying "You're a drug addict." It was a turning point in my relationship with nicotine. Still took a while after that, but I had started on the road that's led me here.

Perhaps some fat people could do with looking themselves in the eye and saying some harsh but true words. But that's for you alone to decide. I'm not really aware of fat acceptance, the little I know of it I've read on this site in the last few days. The people who say it's about discarding the negative emotions associated with being overweight are the ones talking sense I think. A cycle of self-hatred based on your weight is only going to reduce your ability to lose the weight. But it's not OK to be overweight! For plenty of reasons already mentioned in this thread and more. Be positive about life, be happy, love and be loved, enjoy every second of your day! But lose that weight.

Fitness, weight, diet and exercise are all linked together in a complicated way. Broadly speaking weight is about diet and fitness is about exercise but they feed back to each other. More muscle mass means a higher base metabolic requirement, you will burn more calories just sitting still. A great diet means you won't feel sluggish and will do more exercise. The information is out there for free, just google and start reading.

And lose that weight!

Awesome post!

Absolutely this!

Love this part - "But still, we must take personal responsibility for our lives! If you're fat, admit it to yourself. This should not lead to any thoughts that you are a bad person, do not deserve to be happy, are incapable of achieving wonderful things, cannot be successful etc etc. You're just fat. And that means that your health is at risk..."

I believe everyone is entitled to feel and act as they choose, but that doesn't mean their chooses in life need to be or should be promoted.

I and most people who are fat or who have been fat do not argue for fat promotion. Except for some weirdos. We are arguing against ostracizing fat people. There is a difference.

2 (somewhat snarky) thoughts:

That article was horribly written, I know it’s a stereotype but I expect better from the British.

She needs to see someone about her ability to apply eyeliner. Now.

Lol. Delicious rebuttal. Scrumptious. And right on point.

Then your sister is lucky to have you. Maybe. It depends on what those words might be.

Also, from my experience the fat acceptance movement is more about people who have had weight problems for many years, or throughout their whole lives. I can say that I've never met a real person (read: non-troll) who actually decided to put on 50lbs because she wanted a fatkini instead of a bikini.

It was actually a figure of speech. However, I do have a friend that is 100+ overweight. My words to her were exactly this: "Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to be healthy?" She said, "Yes" Then I said, "Then you should count calories with me, its working rather well!" Then I talked to her about all the advantages that go along with my journey and said "I encourage you to do it too, since your unhappy with your health right now and I'm concerned about you" This is because she is having lots of health issues. This woman from the article is rather harsh, and I would never say anything like that. I'm saying don't say nothing, say something, say it nicely. She even brought the subject up! Not to go around calling people out for their weight. Just to be clear...

Then your sister (and your friend) are very lucky to have you. If more people went about it like this, not only would society take a huge step in the right direction on the 'manners' scale, but I think you'd find overweight people slimming down a lot easier and keeping it off a lot longer.

Fat acceptance is probably one of the most damaging things to health and fitness. It tells people that fat is normal and acceptable and not a very obvious sign that they need to change their habits. Fat isn't healthy, at all. It's a symptom of eating disorders, health problems, or other issues. This would be like "rash acceptance" or something. Fat is a sign of a problem. Do not embrace it and encourage it.

Strong this. To varying degrees, we're all here partly in an attempt to either stop being, trying to be less, or keeping from being fat. It's MyFitnessPal, not MyFatnessPal.

So, she sees a few overweight girls in an airport and they aren't curled up in balls rocking back and forth lamenting their size and that means they aren't concerned about it? They aren't allowed to be happy, like, ever?

Are they supposed to just hide in dark dungeons until they've lost the proper amount of weight?

I'm all about being healthy and stuff, but wow.

YES

Being obese is unhealthy, and that is a proven fact.

I hesitate to jump in this ring becuase I really don't like controversy. But I'm genuinely curious about this comment. (and I will admit that I am replying before I read through the other 5 or so pages of this thread. I apologize if this is redundant) I know that being obese *can* be unhealthy. But I am in the obese BMI. I have normal blood pressure, normal blood sugar, normal cholesteroal levels, normal lipid levels, etc. I see a doctor every year and have these things checked. Almost without exception every doctor I have ever seen has had the same comment. "If all I had to go by was your test results I would say you are a normal, healthy individual. Then I see your height and weight." There is no compelling medical reason for me to lose weight. And I have been holding steady within 10-15 lbs of my current weight for 15 years or so. I know I should lose weight because it can and most likely will cause complications down the road. But right this minute I am a healthy individual. I suppose that just proves the saying that there is an exception to every rule. I am here to reduce my weight before I am no longer that exception.

There are about 9999 other health markers besides the ones routinely checked like BP and cholesterol.


The compelling reason is that your risk factor for illness/death is much higher and you will never know unless you happen to get some very specific testing done.

Right this minute, an obese person with "healthy blood markers" is not a healthy individual, like you claim. That's a complete fallacy and flies in the face of logic and medicine.

Just to be clear - this woman has written for the Daily Mail. This is not a reputable newspaper!

"Fat-Shaming" or making comments about someone because of their weight (Whether positive or negative) is never acceptable. None of us are perfect, we all have flaws.

This woman is obviously trying to grab attention by writing a base, trash article.

Good luck to her and her career - they are BOTH going to need it!

Kaela x