Took a little break from the internet and touched some grass and it was great. Wander back in here after my hiatus and what do I find? Just a thread with a bunch of fatphobia.
Cute.
For a community that is incredibly careful about protecting its users from the -phobias and the -isms, there sure is a hell of a lot of unchecked fatphobia here basically any time fatness gets brought up.
It’s something I’ve noticed on the left in general as well. The leftist org I’m in has almost no fat people in it and something tells me that’s not because there aren’t any fat leftists out there.
Fatphobia is rooted in anti-Blackness and ableism.
I’d highly recommend the “Maintenance Phase” podcast with Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, as well as Aubrey Gordon’s books “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat” and “You Just Need To Lose Weight.”
TL;DR: There’s mounting evidence that anti-fat bias in medicine is more to blame for poor medical outcomes in fat people rather than just the fat itself.
Diet and exercise don’t result in long-term weight loss for something like 95% of people. As a leftist, are you really gonna sit here and blame this on individual choices rather than systemic issues? Are you really gonna try to convince us that 95% of people are just lacking willpower?
Please note that this thread is not an invitation to convince me I’m wrong or share your own personal anecdotal story of successful long-term weight loss with the implication that others can do it because you did it. This post is a request that any thin person (or thin-adjacent person) reading this who wants to argue about how being fat is bad for your health do some research and some self-crit. This post is a request that this community rethink the way it engages with discussions about fatness, diet, fatphobia, and anti-fat bias.
Anti-fat bias literally kills people.
Ok it says 80% of the weight lost was gained back in 5 years and it’s a meta-analysis of 29 different studies so that’s a huge dataset. There’s also some anti-fat bias in the study, but regardless, the implication here is that all the people in all the studies fucked up because they couldn’t stick to a diet and exercise plan longterm. As a leftist, that explanation comes up short for me.
But frankly, this is what I didn’t want to do in this thread.
“We’re not doing calorie denialism here.”
This is the problem. You think my body burns calories at the same rate as your body? You think the human body is a simple machine where you input 500 calories into my body and your body and our bodies process, store and burn them the same way? It’s far more complex than “CICO” and I’m fucking sick to death of thin people preaching about the SiMpLe sCiEnCE. I’m not doing it. Don’t bother responding, I do not have it in me to do the back-and-forth.
The OP specifically asked thin people to STFU, listen, do some self-crit, and do some fucking reading. It’s not an invitation to debate weight loss shit with me. Read the responses from fat people in this thread and fucking do better. It’s exhausting.
Hey, I don't mean to make this thread more unpleasant for you, but as a thin person myself, and one who absolutely hates the CICO garbage bullshit argument, I would like to point out that this is less about thin vs fat and more along the lines of the trans debate, where one side, which knows absolutely fuck-all about biology, tries to insist that its oversimplified understanding of the biology at issue is the One True Answer (and in case I'm being unclear, in this analogy the CICO people are the transphobic "muh chromosomes" types).
As someone who has studied biology, I would like to point out to these people that the body reacts to its own energy state (rich, poor, somewhere in between) in a wide variety of ways. One of the most important cellular signaling molecules is cyclic AMP, which is the depleted version of ATP, the basic energy storage molecule of life. When there's a bunch of cyclic AMP around, the cell (and by extension the body, if this is the case in other regions as well) adjusts its energetic behavior accordingly.
The idea that this doesn't work in reverse is, frankly, very silly.
Also, to all you nonbiologists arguing here: if it's entirely diet and exercise, why is Ozempic so effective in comparison to such a regimen, hmmm? Maybe it's because CICO is and has always been bullshit, eh?
The reason Ozempic is used for weight loss is because it slows down your digestion and reduces appetite and cravings. It literally just makes you eat less. How is that an argument against CICO?
CICO is true. But, it's not useful; we can't measure the actual calories your body absorbs, the actual calories your body burns, nor can we control them. Yes, some actions influence it, but there's many, many reason why 'eating 200 fewer calories and exercising 200 calories worth of work a day' may not lead to 400 calories worth of 'fat loss'.
Ozempic's most important aspects seems to be its effect on the brain (not to say its effect on digestion are unimportant). See the research showing Ozempic helping people with the gambling addictions.