You're too fat to live

Feel free to continue defining it this way, just know that your definition has no basis in anything and makes absolutely no sense.

 

There are some endocrine disorders like Cushing's syndrome that cause rapid weight gain. I really feel sorry for those people.

But, I don't think people are going from a healthy 130 to 250 overnight because of it.

 

Yes it is. If you're fat, especially if it's belly fat, I can very safely bet you have a fucked up metabolism. I can assure you having a high bodyfat % means you're probably eating shit and not exercising.

Back on focus:
It's a pretty complicated issue. My take on being fat is that while it might not be your fault if you got fat (at 5 years old you're not fat because you're lazy, it's your parents' fault), but it's totally your fault if you stay fat. Even then, many people don't want to stay fat and actively try to change, but they fail miserably, and that's part of a bigger, fatter problem.

What the government has been recommending for the last 40 years is complete bullshit. Eating a high quantity of grains combined with a low-fat approach is the best way to fatten cattle and pigs, and, not surprisingly, the effect is the same on humans. If the advice had been to eat real meat, good fats (the bad fats being processed vegetable oils, saturated fat is fine), vegetables and fruits all along, we wouldn't have seen the rise in sugar consumption (especially from high fructose corn syrup) brought by the low-fat craze of the eighties, and we wouldn't have obesity and type 2 diabetes rates higher than ever.

Now you've got fat people trying to lose weight getting recommended to eat more of the grains that got them fat and inflamed in the first place, and even less fat, which leaves them hungry and with mood and blood sugar swings. It gets really frustrating once you start reading into the history of nutrition because you start to realize all the bullshit behind the problem.

Fat people should be lifting weights and eating real, unprocessed, natural foods, and the advice they get is to stress their body more by doing cardio and to eat low-fat stuff that's full of sugar.

That said, I still make fun of fat people and a part of me feels like somehow, they failed at life. I won't trust completely someone who has proven he is not able to take correctly care of his own body, which should be a basic requirement in life.

 

One of the best explanations on the subject I've seen comes from Gary Taubes in his excellent book Good Calories Bad Calories*: you're not fat because you're lazy, you're lazy because you're fat. Simply put, fat people's bodies store so much of the energy coming in that none of it is available for the organs or the muscles. The body falls in starvation mode and restricts energy expenditure because it can't have access to anything, and that mechanism makes people move less and less. A more detailed explanation would take a long time, but that's the basics.



*He makes a couple of mistakes in it, but his deconstruction of modern nutrition is spot on.

 

People can have all sorts of metabolic conditions and disorders and those by themselves are not their fault. What is their fault is how they deal with them.

Ok, so you tend to gain weight easier than someone else who eats the exact same way. Guess what? You can't eat the same way as others. It is your responsibility to adjust your habits to your body's behavior. Its not fair. I was a fat kid growing up but I learned why I was fat and changed the way I ate.

Alright, you have hypothyroidism. That really sucks and I'm sorry. Take your synthroid and watch your diet. The calories have to come from somewhere. If you refuse to accept that you have to adapt your diet to your level of physical activity and metabolism, there is no one to blame but yourself.

None of this matters if you don't give a shit though. If you look in the mirror at your meaty B-cup man tits and just shrug your shoulders and go on about your day, don't be upset if people judge you for looking the way you do and assuming you are lazy. It's because you are. Every day, you make a decision to either continue on that journey or to make a change.

 

You don't need to have a disease to have a genetic makeup that leads to being fat. Let's say you lead a perfectly normal lifestyle but your genetics push you toward putting on weight. (This could mean, eating a normal caloric diet, exercising a couple times a week, and sitting in your office all day.) Or hell, let's say you're just overworked at your job and don't have time to exercise the way you'd like. So let's say you put on 5 lbs a year. 10 years later, you're suddenly a fat fuck. Good luck getting rid of that weight now...

I have a friend who weighs 185 lbs. It took him six months of weightlifting, martial arts, and cardio to drop from 205. (He wasn't wasting his time, he actually knows how to exercise.) He went home for Christmas and put on that 20 lbs again in three weeks. He spent six more months losing that weight again, but what happens if that's not an option for you? What happens if he went on vacation twice a year?

And that's a guy who's in his early 20's. Never mind when he's in his 40's and his metabolism slows down.

Some people are lazy, some people are fat. There is plenty of overlap in these demographics, but they are separate and distinct. Until you understand this distinction, this discussion will go nowhere.

 

It's all in degrees though, personally, I haven't been lumping people who are carrying some extra pounds with the morbidly obese. I am assuming that your wife never hit the 400 pounds that this chick in the article did.

Same applies to Harry above me. Let's define "fat". For a guy 205 lbs and able to follow a fitness routine, to me, is not fat.

 

But my point is that it is cumulative. Like I said, put on 5-10 lbs of body fat a year (really not a lot, if you think about it) and see where you're at in 10-20 years. The morbidly obese are a different case, but you don't need to be morbidly obese to be at risk of heart attacks, diabetes, and liver failure.

 

You're right. But, I never said otherwise. I didn't say that people need a disease to be genetically predisposed to being overweight. Reread lostalldoubt's post, and then reread mine. A sudden, distinct onset of a hormonal imbalance caused by malfunctioning adrenal glands or pituitary gland, or disorders of the endocrine system, will cause someone to gain weight. These are completely different situations from your friend's.

Edit: I think with the endocrine stuff, it's not a matter of 5 or 10 pounds a year. It's like 30 pounds in 2 weeks, inexplicably. It's not going to make you morbidly obese overnight, but it's noticeable in a small period of time.

 

Seems like a timely thread, today I was driving through town and seen a fat chick, probably 15 or 16 years old, literally running from a McDonald's with a bag in one hand and a super sized drink in the other. I thought she robbed the McDonald's, so I was watching her run because I was at a red light, and she made it like 15 yards out of the McDonald's before she got winded and had to start walking. Then she would run 5 yards and walk two, while taking a drink from her giant cup. Repeat, run 5, walk two, drink etc. She had to "run" 50 yards to catch the bus at the bus stop. I honestly couldn't laugh, it was too sad.

And I'm kinda fat, but it hasn't held me back from doing anything I was able to do when I was at my goal weight. Since I got out of high school I gained 40 lbs, mostly because I stopped working out and playing football and started eating terrible. Right now working 100 hour weeks I don't have time to work out, and I find it hard to eat nutritious. If I lost that 40 lbs I'd be a lot happier but at this point I don't think I can.

 

I thought they discontinued doing super sized drinks and fries after that documentary? Did they bring it back?

 

Here is a brief list of things that are paid for by society because of people's poor decisions that directly and in many cases exclusively caused their illnesses.

Diabetics: sure, type II diabetes is genetically linked and not exclusively due to poor lifestyle. But once you have that illness, you can make a bunch of decisions that will improve your outcome. You can take your blood pressure medications so your kidneys don't fail; you can take blood sugar lowering meds so your feet don't fall off. You change your diet so you don't need to go on three or four different meds to lower your blood sugar. If you don't? No worries, we'll still pay for those meds, and hospital admissions, and doctor's visits, and dialysis.

Smoking. Holy hell, here's a big one. Do you know how much it costs for a single month of basic therapy for COPD? How about for a hospital admission because of an exacerbation of COPD? We'll pay for all of it, and we'll pay for it while you continue to smoke and fail to do the only thing that will really increase your lifespan at that point. Lung transplant? Chemotherapy for your lung cancer? Knock yourself out. Theoretically the taxes you pay on your cigarettes help offset the cost, but a typical combination of inhalers is over $100 on the open market. Throw in hospital admissions and you had better have smoked a fuckload of cigarettes.

Blood pressure. Sure there's pills, but you can modify your diet and make a reasonable difference in blood pressure. But why do that when your doctor can just add on another drug?

If you're over 65, it's all getting paid for. Just a $2 co-pay for low income seniors, $6.11 for high income seniors up to a co-pay of $100 per year, at that, and you can probably find a pharmacy that waives the co-pay because apparently $2 is too much for medications that can cost up to $100 a month because your insufficiently will-powered ass won't make a few lifestyle changes.

I don't understand why obesity is the line in the sand. Maybe because it's visible, because you can see people waddling into the local KFC but you don't notice if the guy buying a pack of candy at 7-11 also has an HbA1C of 10. Me, I'm not too bent out of shape about it.

 

Say what you will about fat people, but their noble sacrifice in the coming zombie/velociraptor apocalypse will not be forgotten, unwilling though it may be.

 

And in one sentence, you kill my fat-hate for the day.

 

They only stopped asking if you wanted it every time you order

That said a Canadian large/super size has always been smaller than an American one

 

Because obesity is one of the antitheses of our cultural standards of beauty. Don't deny for one second that part of the reason for the societal hostility toward fatties is because they're unsightly.