To be fair, the only reason Nom is upset about BMI being a bad predictor of obesity is that he's having difficulty finding sufficiently fat white women by BMI alone. Yes, it's not a useful tool for predicting obesity. That's just dog bites man at this point. Getting self-righteous about how a metric supposedly tells you you're overweight when you've already got it in your mind that you're not overweight and you already know it's a bad metric is silly. BMI has its uses, but reinforcing your body image and self-esteem just isn't one of them.
Isn't obesity based on BMI? I honestly don't care either way, I'm just trying to figure out what we're all talking about -- whether we mean fat by weight, by BMI, by body fat %, by shape, etc.
I'm a bit WDT drunk, so I'll just chime in quick: No one in the entire fucking galaxy is responsible for ANY choice you make except you. Fat fuck? Your fault. Awesome? Your fault. Don't like being a big fat pig? Walk a mile until you can jog a mile until you can run a mile. Don't eat so fucking much. Exercise some self restraint. Make a fucking effort. If you can't make an effort and you die, that shit is on you. End of story.
THIS! Losing weight and eating healthy takes a certain amount of discipline. About a year ago I weighed 236 pounds. I'm 6'2" so I didn't look terrible, but I felt like shit, and ate like shit. I was in an unhappy relationship and didn't give a fuck. I ended that relationship, realized I was a piece of garbage, and did something about it. No more ice cream. No more candy. No more pasta dinners three nights a week. I eat veggies, meat, and as few processed foods as possible and I weigh 195 as of this morning. I look healthy, feel a million times better, and people who haven't seen me in a while tell me I look good. Obviously there are cases where someone has a hormone deficiency which causes them to gain weight, but I guarantee you 99% of the fat people you see do not have one. Give me complete control of the diet of any fat/obese person walking the street, and I guarantee I would make them lose weight. It's not rocket science.
Obesity is absolutely a disease. It's a psychological disorder just like anorexia, or depression, or ADD, or any of they other million psychological disorders that are diagnosed every day. The reason it became more prevalent after 1984 is because of all the crap in processed foods and the access to so much of it. Give a junkie access to unlimited supplies of drugs and see what happens. For people like most of you and me who are just a little fat, 15-30 pounds overweight, it's a function of eating a little too much, being a little lazy, and not paying attention to what you're shoveling in your face. For the morbidly obese it is a constant psychological battle. Lose weight, gain back 10 extra pounds, feel like shit, eat more, gain more, feel like shit, lose 20 pounds, gain back an extra 5. It is not as simple as put the fork down and step away from the plate. It just is not.
Strictly speaking, yes, obesity as a clinical term is typically defined by BMI. Aside from this, everyone's going to have their own definition. You, for example, were posting up pictures of women who maybe had a few extra pounds, or were "big-boned" (which I suppose means they had large frames but otherwise weren't carrying that much extra fat). But you came along and pointed out, "BMI says these women are obese!" which we can all agree is silly. But there's the rub: we're making a subjective and emotional conclusion about someone's weight status, and rejecting one of the few objective measures we have. The other side to it is that despite the clinical definition of obesity as a BMI over 30 (morbid obesity > 40, or > 35 with a comorbid condition), no medical professional of any sort will recommend that you lose weight using your BMI alone without considering other things, like what you mentioned: body fat percentage, how muscly you are, body shape, android vs. gynoid fat distribution, etc., or even just looking at someone and realizing that they're really not that fat. The thing is when you get into BMIs over 30, there just aren't very many weightlifters and bodybuilders out there in the world, but plenty of people who are carrying their weight as fat.
People who suffer from disorders like these have a responsibility to change. It may be therapy, medication...whatever you need to do to find balance so that you can be as healthy as you can, right?
I have a slight problem with using bmi as a determining of healthy weight. I posted this picture in the Kodak Moment thread a while ago after i had been on a diet for a year and lost 80 pounds. I am 6'7" the photo on the right is me at 345 pounds (38.9 BMI), the photo on the left is at 265 pounds and 29.9 BMI. That bmi puts me .1 pounds under being clinically obese. BMI puts my ideal weight at 164 at the low end of healthy and 221 on the very high end. I don't see myself getting any lighter than 240 maybe 230 without looking like Spoiler
Absolutely. I just take offense at, nor do I understand, blind hatred of fat people. I had a close relative who died from the myriad medical complications of obesity, and I understand first hand the psychological and emotional aspects of the disease.
Blind hatred of fat people is predisposed in us for several reasons. First, the evolutionary reason: From a purely evolutionary and biological standpoint, muscular people are aesthetically pleasing, fat people are not. In terms if reproduction and expansion of the species, muscular or fit people are more attractive and better suited mates than fat people. Fat people have health problems, are slower, and generally less fit for reproduction. There is a chance their children might be fat, via genetics. Second is the way we've been raised and what we've been told as a society to value: good looks are valuable. There are people who are rich and famous for no reason other than being good looking. We're also raised to believe that fat = lazy, and that lazy = worthless, and therefore fat = worthless. When describing people who are lazy, how often is the word "fat" used right before or after (as in "that fat, lazy asshole" or "that lazy, fat piece of shit"). My guess would be at least 75% of the time the word lazy is used, fat is used in conjunction. Again, the blind hatred simply stems from the fact that people think anyone who is fat is automatically lazy, and hence worthless. It is a stereotype that has been drilled into us, but one we don't even consider a stereotype because 'fat' isn't a gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation where stereotypes are considered bad. Now, obviously, society is not going to change on this. Fat will still be considered synonymous with lazy and worthless. The problem is that fat people are getting the same messages and societal values that everyone else is, so they consider themselves lazy and worthless because they're fat. Then they feel shitty about themselves and eat, because when we feel shitty about ourselves, we tend to fall back on some kind of addiction that makes us feel better (see: alcohol, drugs, alcohol, food, alcohol). How many of you have a shitty day at work, then come home and drink four or five beers? Instead, fat people have a shitty day at work, and come home and eat a big bag of M&Ms and wash it down with two or three cans of Coke. You end up with a slight beer belly, they end up fat. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I'm a fat piece of shit. Everyone looks at me like I'm a fat piece of shit. This makes me feel shitty, so I'll find comfort in food. This makes me a fatter piece of shit, so now I feel worse. Time to eat more, as it is the only thing that makes me feel good..." and the cycle continues until someone or something snaps them the fuck out of it.
Not for nothing, but nothing you're saying here is universal. This only applies in cultures where we have food surpluses. In places where there isn't enough food, being fat is often a desirable and attractive characteristic because it demonstrates that those people have enough wealth to obtain a surplus of food. Generalizing, this makes them worth more in those societies (and probably not lazy, because they obtained their wealth somehow!). Really, evolutionarily, we have evolved to favor the fat, because an ability to store more of your food as fat meant that you were using your food resources more efficiently. Again, now that we have a food surplus in the first world, maybe this will start to change and we'll select for the tall and fit, but that hasn't historically been the case.
Edit: fuck my phone and its random capitalization. Perception of What is "fat" is certainly changing. My daughter's peers are substantially heavier than my peers And I were at their age. My class had one truly FAT girl...and she was single And definitely got by on her personality and smarts. These girls now...there's no shame in being overweight. They're curvy...bootylicious...sumptuous. I'm not kidding. My daughter is overweight. It pisses me off...I don't keep or allow junk food in my house. I don't feed them a bunch of crap. But...she is in high school and I'm not always there to monitor. All I can do is model good habits and choices for her and remind her to take care of herself. I don't want her to turn into a scarf and barf girl. Fat is becoming OK...not obese but fat. People in this thread have talked about being 30# overweight like it's nothing. 30# is substantial. It's not necessarily obese but it is substant ial .
And disorders like that are dealt with through therapy and effort, not having a doctor wrap a rubber band around the patients stomach. This is the only psychological disorder I've seen treated with GI surgery.
Bullshit. This is a cultural phenomenon that's less than 100 years old and rachii is entirely right that it's about food surplus. Before the 1920's, food surplus only existed among the very wealthy. There were no national populations worth mentioning where food surplus was universal, or even a majority. In places with insufficient food - being fat was historically (and still is in parts of Africa) a sign of wealth and status - because fat people can clearly afford fucking food. There are still parts of africa where families fatten up their daughters for marriage so they'll get a good husband. Evolutionary biology has NOTHING To do with how we view fat people. Evolutionary biology spans concepts like 'Does she have good child bearing hips? Does she have productive mammary glands? Does he appear able to provide food and shelter for children? and let's face it, lots of us are really fucking attracted to women with skinny hips and broke douchebags with art degrees. Evolutionary Bio might play a role in our aversion to people so morbidly obese that they can't get away from a lion. But even that is unlikely and poorly linked to any of the existing science, and would probably relate to women's attraction to men, not the other way around. Reality is that our aversion to fat is a cultural phenomenon that comes in small part from a better understanding of health, but in majority from a media industry build around technology models that make skinny people look better. Ask anyone who works behind a camera who shoots better, a 90lb borderline 6 with a good makeup person, or a curvy 8? So much of what we're attracted too on a cultural level reflects what shows up better on film, because if we need 8 for our film/photo shoot/whatever - it's a bunch easier to find a 7 who films well. I believe in certain parts of the world, lazy and negro have also been commonly associated. Do you think it's also acceptable to have a blind hatred of black people because they're commonly referred to as lazy? I agree that that's actually a factor - but really, do you actually think that that's ok? The kind of thing that you can go 'well you can't blame people for thinking that darkies are lazy, that's how they're always referred to?' or is that some kind of magical fat people exception? I'm also not sure that the word usage is causative. I hear many people referred to as lazy cunts, lazy bitches, lazy fuckheads, lazy assholes, or lazy pieces of shit. Do you think that there's an association with all of those things and insufficient physical activity, or do you think that people perhaps choose the negative terms that spring first to mind and just blast them out based on what sounds suitably negative? I agree that negativity builds on itself, but I'm not convinced that the negative association was caused by the word, so much as the word usage became negative from the way people viewed fat people. I'm a fat bastard. I've lost a bit more than 75lbs since March and I'm still about 75lbs from the bodyweight I'd consider reasonably healthy. My body weight issues started with awful patterns as a child, extends to terrible cultural and career food patterns, and went from problematic to disastrous when I was on anti-depressants. I went from 185lbs to 330lbs in less than two years while I was on anti-depressants and coming off anti-depressants it took a year before my body started responding to dietary changes and exercise the way it did before the drugs. I was actually pretty worried about the speed that my body weight was dropping until I found a GP who'd seen the same issues with the same drugs in other patients. But I've never seriously considered surgery and I've never held it up as a failing of the public health system that I'd have to pay for it if I did take it up. But the reality is that providing public health care surgery is cheaper by a massive stretch than providing public health care for the long term repercussions of un-managed excess weight. That said, I'd like to see the public health care provision come in the form of a loan, that becomes payable if you don't follow through and actually do something about it. Gastric sleeving and liposuction at substantially reduced cost - with the provision that you also change your diet and exercise, with assessments at 1, 5 and 10 year markers - where if you haven't actually done something useful, you get a bill for it. Fuck the people who get the procedure, especially the ones who get it paid for by a public health system or insurance, and then don't follow through to actually benefit from it. ... You don't think that fat people would rather take Zoloft fatbuster? Or Ritaslim? Nobody WANTS GI surgery. They just want an easier way to lose weight - because for most people, the change is really, really fucking hard. If there was a drug treatment for obesity - it'd be prescribed like fucking candy - just like the drug treatments for every other psych disorder. And keep in mind that other psych disorders are still often treated with electro-convulsive therapy in severe cases and the history of treatment of pysch disorders with surgery is spectacularly nauseating. Shit, if ECT could demonstrably indicate a substantial benefit for weight loss, you'd see people lining the fucking up for GP referrals and DIY home kits with jumper leads and car batteries selling like ... well like hot cakes.
Any bariatric surgery program worth anything starts with counseling, and most insurance companies won't approve the surgery unless the patient goes through a medically supervised diet. There are other reasons for being fat and not being able to lose weight. What about people with severe rheumatoid arthritis who can't exercise, or herniated disks in their back and can't exercise for long enough periods of time to be of any use? That's what pisses me off about making fun of fat people. Sometimes you don't know what the reason is, and there could very well be a perfectly valid one. It's not always about eating like a pig.