The body positivity movement promotes obesity

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

george6417 wrote: »

Another flavor of degeneration afaict. We will end up like the land whales on electric carts in the movie WALL-E. Nobody should feel positive about being obese and people with obese kids should be charged with child abuse.

I used to smoke and drink. I never thought it was a good idea. I always knew it was bad for me, and for society. I'd never expect people to accept that. I'd never expect people to let children do those things. I never felt good about it either.

I did feel good about stopping, and becoming healthy and a role model for my children. That's what we should be proud of. Positive imporovment. Otherwise it's a participation award.

Can't believe people died in world wars to support what humanity has become. Those guys had it so hard, and got so little respect. We do so little and demand so much respect and praise.

Drinking isn't just accepted, it's widely encouraged in society, so I don't know if that's the best argument. I quit drinking, and lost a lot of friends when I did... because.... "it's no fun if you don't drink with us". There's a lot of things people do that they probably shouldn't. It's human.

I don't drink, but don't deter people from doing it. I don't need to drink to have fun or relieve stress (I do that working out). And at the very least, someone is sober to drive.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

In my mind, body positivity movement isn't about just accepting being unhealthy or glorifying obesity. Although it gets simplified to that, particularly when an opponent pushes the point that fat people should hate themselves and be miserable all the time if they "refuse" to lose weight. People HATE to see a fat person enjoying their life.

Independent of the movement, my idea of body positivity is:

knowing that you don't have to have contempt for yourself for being fat. That you're still worthy of self love and love from others.

Knowing that for every body type, there are people out there who can't get enough of it.

That you're still human and having a human experience.

That weight alone is not the only determinant of your overall health.

And that weight gain or lose can happen for many reasons, some of them truly beyond our control.

I think that people who are shamed and taught to hate their bodies won't feel an incentive to improve. Improvement needs to come from a place of self love, wanting better health and a better state of mind.

Personally, it was only after I 1. started ignoring the external criticism from people who didn't matter (ie not my physician), and 2. stopped bad-mouthing my body out loud, that i stopped feeling contempt for it. Which led to a desire to take better care of it. And here we are.

There is, or at least should be, a difference between not discriminating against a person because of their weight and saying, as seems to be the case, that a person can be obese, even morbidly so, and it doesn't affect their health in extremely negative ways. All the evidence shows differently. That is even the case with Sumo wrestlers who also suffer from obesity-related illnesses. Yes, the incidences for them are slightly lower, likely because of the physical training that is part of being a Sumo Wrestler, but they still have increased issues with all the illnesses that other obese people who don't do that training face. Positivity to the point of denying the real danger to health simply because of lifestyle is not positive for them in the longterm.

lemonsnbees wrote: »

i think people really have a lot of misconceptions on fatness, and an incorrect definition of obesity. obesity is when you're UNHEALTHY due to being severely overweight- but being fat doesn't necessarily make you overweight or unhealthy. many different factors play into body shape aside from food consumption and exercise, such as genetics, height, sex, age, medical conditions, and various other traits. being fat isn't unhealthy for everyone- for some people, it's possible that a lot of fat could indicate health problems. but for a lot of others, being fat is natural and, for a matter of fact, healthy. according to my BMI (29.7), i am almost obese- but my doctors and other medical sources say my weight is perfectly healthy for me.
not to mention, we shouldn't shame people even if they WERE obese. rather, we should encourage them to work towards a healthier weight for them personally. obesity can be a result of things beyond "laziness," and can instead be caused by various mental and physical disabilities. so we SHOULD normalize obesity- not romanticize it, but also not demonize those with it, either.

I do take your main point, and 100% agree that health and body fat don't march along hand in hand universally, and way more than 100% agree that we shouldn't shame, stereotype, or demonize people who have body fat (or most any other appearance issue).

I have to quibble, though: The standard definitions of "obesity" are in terms of BMI. In the US, the definition is a BMI over 30. It's a body size ratio, though, I agree, not a measure of health.

I understand the limitations of BMI. Even "the establishment" understands those limitations. For example, the US NIH's BMI calculator has a link to a whole page on limitations**, and talks about BMI in terms of increased risks for health conditions, i.e., a statistical correlation in groups, not an individual indicator of health. It's true, though, that many people misunderstand BMI, and some organizations misuse it unfairly.

** https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/risk.htm#limitations

That said, I personally was less healthy when in the obese BMI range, vs. now in the normal BMI range. Despite being very athletically active for over a decade while in that weight range - and pretty fit by multiple objective measures - I had high blood pressure, very high cholesterol/triglycerides, worse arthritis symptoms, and more.

I'm sure some of that is because risks are more likely to come to roost with age, and I was on the threshold of my 60s when I finally lost weight. For me, most of the health concerns have resolved. I still have arthritis (of course, there's not a cure), but I experience much less pain, discomfort, or physical limitations at a lighter weight.

As with so many things, others' experiences will differ.

lemonsnbees wrote: »

i think people really have a lot of misconceptions on fatness, and an incorrect definition of obesity. obesity is when you're UNHEALTHY due to being severely overweight- but being fat doesn't necessarily make you overweight or unhealthy. many different factors play into body shape aside from food consumption and exercise, such as genetics, height, sex, age, medical conditions, and various other traits. being fat isn't unhealthy for everyone- for some people, it's possible that a lot of fat could indicate health problems. but for a lot of others, being fat is natural and, for a matter of fact, healthy. according to my BMI (29.7), i am almost obese- but my doctors and other medical sources say my weight is perfectly healthy for me.
not to mention, we shouldn't shame people even if they WERE obese. rather, we should encourage them to work towards a healthier weight for them personally. obesity can be a result of things beyond "laziness," and can instead be caused by various mental and physical disabilities. so we SHOULD normalize obesity- not romanticize it, but also not demonize those with it, either.

Because of the grey area of how being fat can still be considered healthy and how much is unhealthy has people totally confused.

Both China and India have more metabolic disease including diabetes than the USA on a % basis with a population that is fairly lean. What does this mean, it means that the population in the USA that is of normal weight, a percentage of that population will have metabolic disease and it appears the scientific community seems to agree that that number is in and around 40%. When all the numbers are calculated only about 12% of the US population have no issues regarding the symptoms of metabolic disease.

If your wondering why someone that appears thin that can still be very sick is because of how we've evolved and have prepared our genetic makeup for survival over the last few million years. Basically there's a fat that is used for energy in times of food shortages and starvation which is called subcutaneous fat, the fat directly beneath our skin and is basically benign on the disease front and why some people that are overweight and considered obese have no metabolic disease and considered healthy. The other fat that we store is called visceral fat this shows up in waist/stomach but not all the time and it's the fat that the liver stores as triglycerides as VLDL which eventually drive small particle LDL down stream, heart disease and fatty liver is a given along with higher blood pressure, it really is a destructive fat. If you have the fortitude there's videos showing how this fat basically takes over and engulfs our internal organs, it's really unnerving. This is basically from the metabolism of fructose in a scenario where people are overeating. It's the main reason why the increasing amount of Doctors are now opening clinics and prescribing low carb diets for their clientele that have metabolic disease and is primarily, to remove sugar.