This excerpt Really Stood Out to me as a key to so much and not simply isolated to just being overweight:
“Eighty percent of my patients cry in the first appointment,” Sogg says. “For something as emotional as weight, you have to listen for a long time before you give any advice. Telling someone, 'Lay off the cheeseburgers' is never going to work if you don't know what those cheeseburgers are doing for them.”
But there has to be an answer right? I mean the fact that we are all getting fatter can be attributed to something, and should therefore be solvable - right?
I do think it has a lot to do with class and wealth. Increasingly fat people are poor people, and thin people are young or better off.
My thoughts are similar. I like that the article makes some good arguments for "fat-acceptance" on a personal level. It shows that the shaming-approach clearly does not "work" and has detrimental effects on the wellbeing of people. But it has to lead somewhere right?
Complete acceptance on a governmental level - not willing to recognize it as a societal or even market issue - would make it much harder to combat the horrible subsidy/taxation/advertisement/... mechanisms that lie at the source of this problem (as the article argues). Because it is a problem, and it should be solved on different levels.
I would have liked to see some explicit do's next to all the insightful don't do's.
I love the quote by Michael Pollan. “Eat real food, mostly plants and not too much” seems easy but I think sometime the challenge is finding “real” food. The grocery store is full of sugar, salt, GMOs and flavor packets. Fast food is a national nightmare with huge health costs.
That is one of my favorite quotes/mantras too. It makes sense. With the industrial/processed food industry we have grown up in this country, we have a lot of fixin' to do. Starting with a broad awareness of industrial foods vs. (what is the right word??) 'natural/basic' foods, where in the grocery store to shop (the edges, not the middle aisles), how to cook so that food tastes good and stays healthy, etc. A lot to do!
This is an exceptionally well written article. You know that's the case when you realize you've finished and almost an hour went by in what felt like 10 minutes. The clickbaity title made me skeptical before I began reading, but as soon as I started I was immediately engrossed and nodding along in agreement.
That continued to be the case until about a third of the way through when this line jumped out at me:
Plus, rather obviously, smoking is a behavior; being fat is not.
Then we were right back into the heartfelt personal stories that exemplify the pain and struggle that obese individuals face. The negative reinforcement of shame and stress. The broken healthcare system. The fad diets that almost never work. But then again, another third of the way through:
They still live in a society that believes weight is temporary, that losing it is urgent and achievable, that being comfortable in their bodies is merely “glorifying obesity.” This limbo, this lie, is why it’s so hard for fat people to discover one another or even themselves.
Then again, right back to historical trends and statistics. An agricultural-industrial complex that subsidizes the most unhealthy foods imaginable. The sedentary lifestyle that ever increasing numbers of Americans are living. But then to cap it off:
And then Lenham must explain that these dreams are a trap. Because there is no magical cure. There is no time machine. There is only the revolutionary act of being fat and happy in a world that tells you that’s impossible.
Can you empower someone to be fatalistic, or is that just disempowerment? The author does such an amazing job of enumerating all the broken mechanisms in our society that lead to obesity and make it difficult to lose weight. Why pretend it's impossible?
The author argues health is more than weight, and more important. The last one esp. was about waiting for skinny before getting healthy or going on with life. "Not waiting" reclaims agency, power.
Yes the title was intriguing and pulled me in. The more I kept reading the more I thought there was a build up and I was expecting to read the clear and final solution of how to lose weight. Not an enlightening read but rather a summary of things I have always known.
This excerpt Really Stood Out to me as a key to so much and not simply isolated to just being overweight:
But there has to be an answer right? I mean the fact that we are all getting fatter can be attributed to something, and should therefore be solvable - right?
I do think it has a lot to do with class and wealth. Increasingly fat people are poor people, and thin people are young or better off.
My thoughts are similar. I like that the article makes some good arguments for "fat-acceptance" on a personal level. It shows that the shaming-approach clearly does not "work" and has detrimental effects on the wellbeing of people. But it has to lead somewhere right?
Complete acceptance on a governmental level - not willing to recognize it as a societal or even market issue - would make it much harder to combat the horrible subsidy/taxation/advertisement/... mechanisms that lie at the source of this problem (as the article argues). Because it is a problem, and it should be solved on different levels.
I would have liked to see some explicit do's next to all the insightful don't do's.
I love the quote by Michael Pollan. “Eat real food, mostly plants and not too much” seems easy but I think sometime the challenge is finding “real” food. The grocery store is full of sugar, salt, GMOs and flavor packets. Fast food is a national nightmare with huge health costs.
That is one of my favorite quotes/mantras too. It makes sense. With the industrial/processed food industry we have grown up in this country, we have a lot of fixin' to do. Starting with a broad awareness of industrial foods vs. (what is the right word??) 'natural/basic' foods, where in the grocery store to shop (the edges, not the middle aisles), how to cook so that food tastes good and stays healthy, etc. A lot to do!
"The only way to get rid of stigma is from power."
This is an exceptionally well written article. You know that's the case when you realize you've finished and almost an hour went by in what felt like 10 minutes. The clickbaity title made me skeptical before I began reading, but as soon as I started I was immediately engrossed and nodding along in agreement.
That continued to be the case until about a third of the way through when this line jumped out at me:
Then we were right back into the heartfelt personal stories that exemplify the pain and struggle that obese individuals face. The negative reinforcement of shame and stress. The broken healthcare system. The fad diets that almost never work. But then again, another third of the way through:
Then again, right back to historical trends and statistics. An agricultural-industrial complex that subsidizes the most unhealthy foods imaginable. The sedentary lifestyle that ever increasing numbers of Americans are living. But then to cap it off:
Can you empower someone to be fatalistic, or is that just disempowerment? The author does such an amazing job of enumerating all the broken mechanisms in our society that lead to obesity and make it difficult to lose weight. Why pretend it's impossible?
The author argues health is more than weight, and more important. The last one esp. was about waiting for skinny before getting healthy or going on with life. "Not waiting" reclaims agency, power.
This insightful summary helped raise some of my confusion on the message of the article. Thanks!
Yes the title was intriguing and pulled me in. The more I kept reading the more I thought there was a build up and I was expecting to read the clear and final solution of how to lose weight. Not an enlightening read but rather a summary of things I have always known.
I felt the same way. I kept waiting for some big conclusive moment but it never came...