Fat Acceptance Movement

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Anorexics have pro-ana groups, obese people have fat-acceptance groups. Its a way of retreating from a society that considers their health to be at risk and instead surrounding themselves with people who are affirming that what they are or what they are doing is okay.

I don't really like the term "fat acceptance," but I'd distinguish between organized groups like HAES or FA (to the extent that's a group) and the general concept of accepting oneself or liking oneself whatever one's size. It is probably difficult for those who have not struggled with self hatred or severe body issues (beyond looking in the mirror and saying "I don't like X" or "Y could be improved" or "I wish my fat didn't linger there, while leaving this other place so easily" -- all of which I think are healthy and normal and where I mostly am now) to understand probably, but for a lot of us the feelings of self-hatred and shame (and I agree that shame is largely internalized, not simply the result of what others say) were extremely counter-productive to doing what is necessary to improve one's health, fitness, appearance, etc.

I think feeling better about myself even when fat helped me get to the point where I cared about being healthier and worked at it, at first (this wasn't that recent) with the idea that I would be as fit and healthy as possible even if I could not lose weight (because for weird reasons I doubted it would work). Doing that meant of course that I did lose weight and get fit. It wasn't as part of a group, but reading people who argued against the dieting obsession (not that I ever was a big dieter, personally) and for self-acceptance really helped me. (One example is Laura Fraser.) Now, had anyone ever said "and you should not want to lose weight and quit if you do" I would have laughed, since I always thought intellectually one could and should lose, if obese, and besides I thought OF COURSE we all want to. I didn't ever think being unfit/overeating was a good or responsible choice. But still I would say that notions of accepting myself and not hating myself helped me. (And I would have considered something like eat less/move more empowering too, if it had existed then, just as I found the logical understanding of calories and nutrition and exercise to be helpful.)

I think it's a shame that this gets grouped in with whacko extremists making odd political statements that most people probably have never even heard of.

AnvilHead wrote: »

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

I have a problem with this on a personal level. I think big people are beautiful! I think there are lots of big people out there who can kick my butt, lift more than me, outrun me, and swim harder than me. I think you can be healthy and big...

Be careful not to confuse "healthy" with "having some level of physical fitness". They're not the same thing.

By "healthy" I mean zero cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose, liver, etc problems, not necessarily strictly physical abilities.

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

AnvilHead wrote: »

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

I have a problem with this on a personal level. I think big people are beautiful! I think there are lots of big people out there who can kick my butt, lift more than me, outrun me, and swim harder than me. I think you can be healthy and big...

Be careful not to confuse "healthy" with "having some level of physical fitness". They're not the same thing.

By "healthy" I mean zero cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose, liver, etc problems, not necessarily strictly physical abilities.

It's completely possible to be overweight and healthy (I was). But the more extra fat a person carries the greater their risk for future disease is increased. The risk factor is about the same has some of the risk factors you mention above. That's why I decided to lose weight. While my blood work was fine now, I knew the odds of it remaining so if I continued to carry around extra fat.

It's impossible to be obese and healthy now that obesity itself is a recognized medical condition. By definition you are unhealthy if you are obese.

trigden1991 wrote: »

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

I think big people are beautiful! I think there are lots of big people out there who can kick my butt, lift more than me, outrun me, and swim harder than me. I think you can be healthy and big.

Firstly the term "big" should not be used to describe people who are obese. Secondly, it is absurd to say all people of a certain size are beautiful.

Also there are numerous health risks directly related to being overweight/obese.

Some people are just big, though. There are many body types out there. Maybe you're big from tumors, or maybe you're 7feet tall and bulky, or maybe you are some other size/shape that looks "big" or oversized.

All big people, including obese, ARE beautiful, I'm sorry that you don't agree that every single human is beautiful. Of course, fat itself is NOT beautiful, and just like a bad haircut, or a case of depression, it will detract from one's beauty, both physically and emotionally.

There are numerous risks related to being overweight, I never said there weren't. There are numerous risks related to sitting down all day, or eating nothing but red meat, or smoking -> but these are all things done by thin people as well. Risks are just that though: they are not a finite end. I am obese and my cholesterol is too low, blood pressure is low, triglycerides are almost too low, glucose is a little high sometimes but it stays around 95. I have a ton of risk, but again -> it's risk, not a definite.

If you value someone's health based on their weight, it should stand to say you think meth addicts are healthier than an overweight jogger...not meaning to be pushy just pointing out that's my takeaway from your comment.

Need2Exerc1se wrote: »

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

AnvilHead wrote: »

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

I have a problem with this on a personal level. I think big people are beautiful! I think there are lots of big people out there who can kick my butt, lift more than me, outrun me, and swim harder than me. I think you can be healthy and big...

Be careful not to confuse "healthy" with "having some level of physical fitness". They're not the same thing.

By "healthy" I mean zero cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose, liver, etc problems, not necessarily strictly physical abilities.

It's completely possible to be overweight and healthy (I was). But the more extra fat a person carries the greater their risk for future disease is increased. The risk factor is about the same has some of the risk factors you mention above. That's why I decided to lose weight. While my blood work was fine now, I knew the odds of it remaining so if I continued to carry around extra fat.

It's impossible to be obese and healthy now that obesity itself is a recognized medical condition. By definition you are unhealthy if you are obese.

Yes, the disease of obesity really is with long-term obesity and the effect it has, taxing your systems, over time. Carrying around extra weight is by no means as healthy as one can be. The point of my original reply was that: I am not with the acceptance movement, as nice as it is to recognize the beauty of every individual. I do not believe it's a healthy mindset to believe you do not need improvement, whether you are bedridden or a triathlete, you can always be better.

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

trigden1991 wrote: »

Mary_Anastasia wrote: »

I think big people are beautiful! I think there are lots of big people out there who can kick my butt, lift more than me, outrun me, and swim harder than me. I think you can be healthy and big.

Firstly the term "big" should not be used to describe people who are obese. Secondly, it is absurd to say all people of a certain size are beautiful.

Also there are numerous health risks directly related to being overweight/obese.

Some people are just big, though. There are many body types out there. Maybe you're big from tumors, or maybe you're 7feet tall and bulky, or maybe you are some other size/shape that looks "big" or oversized.

All big people, including obese, ARE beautiful, I'm sorry that you don't agree that every single human is beautiful. Of course, fat itself is NOT beautiful, and just like a bad haircut, or a case of depression, it will detract from one's beauty, both physically and emotionally.

There are numerous risks related to being overweight, I never said there weren't. There are numerous risks related to sitting down all day, or eating nothing but red meat, or smoking -> but these are all things done by thin people as well. Risks are just that though: they are not a finite end. I am obese and my cholesterol is too low, blood pressure is low, triglycerides are almost too low, glucose is a little high sometimes but it stays around 95. I have a ton of risk, but again -> it's risk, not a definite.

If you value someone's health based on their weight, it should stand to say you think meth addicts are healthier than an overweight jogger...not meaning to be pushy just pointing out that's my takeaway from your comment.

What the ..??? What comment did you takeaway the bolded from?

lemurcat12 wrote: »

johunt615 wrote: »

You don't have to accept people's lifestyle choices to accept the person themselves.

You may smoke, I don't - but I can accept you and not accept your choice. That's all I'm saying.

Again I'm talking about individuals not the organization.

I am trying to understand the "I don't accept it" argument. What does it mean to not accept someone's choice to be a smoker?

(This conversation reminds me a bit -- and this is said in a humorous way, as it may be me being dense for not getting it -- of when I got in a cab and the driver said (due to a homeless guy who was asking for money right when I got in) "do you believe in the homeless?" "Um, like do they exist?" I responded.)

I guess we would have to come to a mutually acceptable definition of acceptance in order to get on the same page:)

I accept a smoker won't change his habit until he/she is ready to, his choice, his body. I won't call him names in front of or behind his back. I just accept it is what it is even though I personally don't like the smell of smoke and don't understand the payoff OR wouldn't accept that habit as my own nor accept it as healthy - perhaps that's what your looking for.

Do I like it that effects healthcare cost, or what it teaches his children? No. But what can I do about it but accept him as he is and think about him as a person with thoughts and feelings and try to find something that I can like about him. Does this make sense?

Wrong or Right I guess I believe that people won't/can't change until THEY are ready.

It doesn't mean I will light his cigarette, or buy him some when he's out (ok I may give him money I'm a sucker). If he brings up how he should quit I would share my father in laws experience in quitting when he said he would just try to go the next 5 min without a cig until he quit.

Smoking maybe a bad analogy because there is a physical dependency but replace obese person with a smoker.

Just tossing this out there: Near the bottom of this blog post is a helpful flash card on how to talk to your doctor about HAES.

https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/what-to-say-at-the-doctors-office/

zamphir66 wrote: »

Just tossing this out there: Near the bottom of this blog post is a helpful flash card on how to talk to your doctor about HAES.

https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/what-to-say-at-the-doctors-office/

The first "request" on that card is founded on the faulty premise the fat acceptance movement has: that weight has no impact on health conditions.

There are many medical conditions for which losing weight is a valid medical intervention. There is only so much medicine can do. You need to be a partner in your own health care, and turning a blind eye to the facts of how some diseases work isn't going to change the fact that weight can be a key player in things high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and arthritis.

As someone who lost weight thanks to a medical diagnosis and who is bound and determined to maintain that loss thanks to recently learning of a cancer risk I have associated with obesity, the notion that health is weight neutral frankly appalls me.

It's patently false.

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

tomteboda wrote: »

Noreenmarie1234 wrote: »

Relser wrote: »

The problem I have with it is, you are NOT healthy at any size. Both ways- to skinny is unhealthy and to fat is unhealthy. To skinny can give you reproduction issues, muscle and joint issues. To fat can give you heart issues, joint issues, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

However, shaming someone for being fat makes you an *kitten*, human decency is not limited by someone's size.

Exactly, its not okay to make fun of fat people and "shame" them. But being overweight and obese should NOT be shown as healthy in the media. It is terrible that they are showing "obesity is healthy and normal, some people are just big" because it skews the general perception of obesity. Many people nowadays say that people who are on the low end of healthy are "anorexic thin" and "way too thin". It was never this way back in the the day. But not that everyone is used to seeing so many obese and overweight it has become normal. THAT is the problem.

Except that having a BMI <20 had been shown in many analysis to be strongly correlated with high rates of morbidity and mortality, been after controlling for preexisting illnesses. How high? Higher than "overweight" and "class 1" obesity. Slightly higher than"class 2" obesity. Moreover, outcomes have changed since the smoking rates have dropped.

Lumping "overweight" and all "obese" individuals together makes no statistical sense and less sense for people exhorting on the ills of too much weight.

Have you seen the newest meta-analysis that they did using data for never smokers? I'm not arguing with you, but it changes the old data a bit. Smoking affected the numbers by inversely skewing the data against lower BMI's.

However, being underweight is still as bad as being obese, if I recall correctly off the top of my head.

http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2156

Ok so since people apparently want citations I've given before, and I'm at my computer not on my phone for a change, I'm going to pile on a bunch of extra ones.

You can see in this figure from the cited BMJ article that every graph has a U-shaped curve, with mortality rising steeply below a BMI of 20 (equivalent to between 30-38 depending on the population).

Aune, Dagfinn, et al. "BMI and all cause mortality: systematic review and non-linear dose-response meta-analysis of 230 cohort studies with 3.74 million deaths among 30.3 million participants." bmj 353 (2016): i2156.

From Hellec et. al's meta-analysis:

Bottom line
Normal (20–25 kg/m2) to overweight (25–30 kg/m2) BMI carries the lowest risk of mortality (lowest around 25 kg/m2 [27.5 kg/m2 in the elderly]). Mortality increases below 20 and above 30 kg/m2 (more at the extremes).

Hellec, Braiden, Denise Campbell-Scherer, and G. Michael Allan. "The skinny on BMI and mortality." Canadian Family Physician 61.11 (2015): 970-970.

Another meta-analysis, this one done by Winter et. al:

Results: Thirty-two studies met the inclusion criteria; these studies included 197,940 individuals with an average follow-up of 12 y. With the use of a BMI (in kg/m2) of 23.0–23.9 as the reference, there was a 12% greater risk of mortality for a BMI range of 21.0–21.9 and a 19% greater risk for a range of 20.0–20.9 [BMI of 21.0–21.9; HR (95% CI): 1.12 (1.10, 1.13); BMI of 20.0–20.9; HR (95% CI): 1.19 (1.17, 1.22)]. Mortality risk began to increase for BMI >33.0 [BMI of 33.0–33.9; HR (95% CI): 1.08 (1.00, 1.15)]. Self-reported anthropometric measurements, adjustment for intermediary factors, and exclusion of early deaths or preexisting disease did not markedly alter the associations, although there was a slight attenuation of the association in never-smokers.

Winter, Jane E., et al. "BMI and all-cause mortality in older adults: a meta-analysis." The American journal of clinical nutrition (2014): ajcn-068122.

It's a pattern noted in healthy and unhealthy populations, though more marked in unhealthy ones.

A plot of the RR of mortality against BMI follows a U-shaped, or J-shaped, curve with the minimum mortality close to a BMI of 25 kg/m2. Mortality increases as BMI increases above 25 kg/m2 and as BMI decreases below 25 kg/m2

Hainer, Vojtech, and Irena Aldhoon-Hainerová. "Obesity paradox does exist." Diabetes care 36.Supplement 2 (2013): S276-S281.

This pattern repeats itself even in Asian populations.
Jee, Sun Ha, et al. "Body-mass index and mortality in Korean men and women." New England Journal of Medicine 355.8 (2006): 779-787.

Of course physical fitness appears to be crucially important in understanding the obesity paradox. A study can be read here:

After completing the meta-analysis on the joint association between CRF and BMI on mortality from all causes, the results indicate that the risk of death was dependent upon CRF level and not BMI. Therefore, fit individuals who are overweight or obese are not automatically at a higher risk for all-cause mortality.

Barry, Vaughn W., et al. "Fitness vs. fatness on all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis." Progress in cardiovascular diseases 56.4 (2014): 382-390.

Although obesity adversely affects CV risk factors and LV structure and function, and is associated with increased risk of most CV diseases, an obesity paradox exists showing that overweight and obese patients with CV diseases have a better prognosis than do their leaner counterparts. This obesity paradox seems largely apparent in patients with low fitness, whereas those with better fitness have a good prognosis, and no clear obesity paradox is apparent. Although better long-term intervention studies are needed, purposeful weight reduction, and especially incorporating exercise training and improvements in fitness, seems to be beneficial.

Lavie, Carl J., et al. "Obesity and cardiovascular diseases: implications regarding fitness, fatness, and severity in the obesity paradox." Journal of the American College of Cardiology 63.14 (2014): 1345-1354.

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I particularly like the editorial run in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on the U-shaped mortality curve observed even when disease state is controlled for.

Given the findings of Winter et al, and the earlier work by Andres, it behooves us to reconsider current weight-for-height guidelines. We must be open to the possibility that the hypotheses that 1) increasing weight is uniformly associated with increasing mortality and 2) that best weight-for-height in older adults is the same as that seen in younger adults may be wrong. We need to remember the aphorism of Thomas Huxley : “The great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

Sorkin, John D. "BMI, age, and mortality: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." The American journal of clinical nutrition 99.4 (2014): 759-760.

extra_medium wrote: »

smartiecorky wrote: »

There is a fine line between ACCEPTANCE and PROMOTION. Accepting people for who they are as people rather than what they look like... agreed.

Agreed as well, but I think it's unfortunate when this movement is viewed by the obese person as a reason to accept their obese state as a fundamental part of "who they are" and that there's nothing they can or should do about it for their own well-being regardless of whether or not anyone else accepts them.

I often wonder if they truly accept themselves or if they are just trying to find acceptance from others. The "I don't like that I'm obese but they don't mind and I don't know how to overcome this", mentality.

Alatariel75 wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

If anyone here is laboring under the illusion that HAES still stands for healthy behaviors at any size, they have since dropped any pretense towards encouraging their followers to do that. I cannot find the link right now, but it was posted on Reddit.

They backed away from it after pressure saying that the rhetoric was "healthist" and "ableist".

The fat acceptance movement, when you scratch the surface and look at its leaders and what they do has gone beyond merely wanting people not to be fat shamed. Some of them actively hate thin people. They actively discourage weight loss. They use old science and twist science to back their agenda and actively seek out and recruit young, vulnerable people to join their numbers.

I find them to be loathsome and beneath contempt. The best of them are misguided. The worst of them are hateful charlatans out to make a buck.

I cannot abide fat shaming, but the fat acceptance movement isn't about that any more.

I can't recall her name, but I recently read about a plus size model who lost weight and received vile abuse from HAES and FA people. She was called a traitor and told to kill herself.

Tess Holiday?

cushman5279 wrote: »

I see a lot of younger men and women purposely gaining weight. They work out too which is awesome but they have the attitude like "I'm going to be as big as I wanna be". By all means... still love yourself. But what happens a few years from now when being waif thin is back in style? Then what happens to these kids?

They learn the hard way that fat is the opposite of muscle: it's harder to get rid of than to put on.

cushman5279 wrote: »

I see a lot of younger men and women purposely gaining weight. They work out too which is awesome but they have the attitude like "I'm going to be as big as I wanna be". By all means... still love yourself. But what happens a few years from now when being waif thin is back in style? Then what happens to these kids?

Really? I know a lot of overweight young people that don't seem to care that they are overweight, but I've never known one to purposely try to gain weight. But then I'm old. I didn't even know that waif thin wasn't in style now.